Surfacing (20 page)

“You,” he said, searching for words, not controlled any more, “tight-ass bitch.”

The power flowed into my eyes, I could see into him, he was an imposter, a pastiche, layers of political handbills, pages from magazines,
affiches
, verbs and nouns glued on to him and shredding away, the original surface littered with fragments and tatters. In a black suit knocking on doors, young once, even that had been a costume, a uniform; now his hair was falling off and he didn’t know what language to use, he’d forgotten his own, he had to copy. Second-hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbled, and I couldn’t help him: it would take such time to heal, unearth him, scrape down to where he was true.

“Keep it to yourself then,” he said, “I’m not going to sit up and beg for a little third-rate cold tail.”

I detoured around past him, back towards the cabin. More than ever I needed to find it, the thing she had hidden; the power from my father’s intercession wasn’t enough to protect me, it gave only knowledge and there were more gods than his, his were the gods of the head, antlers rooted in the brain. Not only how to see but how to act.

I thought he would stay there, at least till I was out of range, but he followed along behind me. “Sorry I blew my cool,” he said. His voice had changed again, now it was deferential. “It’s between us, okay? No need to mention it to Anna, right?” If he’d succeeded he would have told her as soon as he could. “I respect you for it, I really do.”

“That’s all right,” I said; I knew he was lying.

They sat around the table in the regular places and I served dinner. There hadn’t been any lunch but no one mentioned that.

“What time is Evans coming tomorrow?” I said.

“Ten, ten-thirty,” David said. “Have a nice afternoon?” he said to Anna. Joe stuck a new potato with his fork and put it into his mouth.

“Fantastic,” Anna said. “I got some sun and finished my book, then I had a long talk with Joe and went for a stroll.” Joe chewed, his closed mouth moving, silent refutation. “And you?”

“Great,” David said, his voice buoyant, inflated. He bent his arm onto the table, his hand brushing mine casually, as though by accident, for her to see. I flinched away, he was lying about me, the animals don’t lie.

Anna smiled mournfully at him. I watched him, he wasn’t laughing, he was staring at her, the lines in his face deepening and sagging. They know everything about each other, I thought, that’s why they’re so sad; but Anna was more than sad, she was desperate, her body her only weapon and she was fighting for her life, he was her life, her life was the fight: she was fighting him because if she ever surrendered the balance of power would be broken and he would go elsewhere. To continue the war.

I didn’t want to join. “It’s not what you think,” I said to Anna. “He asked me to but I wouldn’t.” I wanted to tell her I hadn’t acted against her.

Her eyes flicked from him to me. “That was pure of you,” she said. I’d made a mistake, she resented me because I hadn’t given in, it commented on her.

“She’s pure all right,” David said, “she’s a little purist.”

“Joe told me she won’t put out for him any more,” Anna said, still looking at me. Joe didn’t say anything; he was eating another potato.

“She hates men,” David said lightly. “Either that or she wants to be one. Right?”

A ring of eyes, tribunal; in a minute they would join hands and dance around me, and after that the rope and the pyre, cure for heresy.

Maybe it was true, I leafed through all the men I had known to see whether or not I hated them. But then I realized it wasn’t the men I hated, it was the Americans, the human beings, men and women both. They’d had their chance but they had turned against the gods, and it was time for me to choose sides. I wanted there to be a machine that could make them vanish, a button I could press that
would evaporate them without disturbing anything else, that way there would be more room for the animals, they would be rescued.

“Aren’t you going to answer?” Anna said, taunting.

“No,” I said.

Anna said, “God, she really is inhuman,” and they both laughed a little, sorrowfully.

I
cleared the table and scraped the canned ham fat scraps from the plates into the fire, food for the dead. If you fed them enough they would come back; or was it the reverse, if you fed them enough they would stay away, it was in one of the books but I’d forgotten.

Anna said she would wash the dishes. It was an apology perhaps, reparation for the fact that she’d found it easier to fight on his side than against him. For once. She rattled the cutlery in the pan, singing to avoid discussion, we were beyond the time for confidences; her voice occupied the room, territorial.

It had to be inside the house. Before supper I searched the toolshed, while I was getting the shovel, and the garden when I dug up the potatoes; but it wasn’t there, I would have recognized it. It had to be something out of place, something that wasn’t here when I left, apple in the row of oranges like the old arithmetic workbooks. She would have brought it here especially for me and hidden it where I would discover it when I was ready; like my father’s puzzle it would mediate, we cannot approach them directly. I dried the dishes as Anna washed, inspecting each one to make sure it was familiar. But
nothing had been added since I’d been here, the gift was not a dish.

It wasn’t anywhere in the main room. When we’d finished I went into David’s and Anna’s room: her leather jacket was there, hanging up, it hadn’t been put back since the trip. I examined the pockets; there was nothing in them but an empty metal aspirin container and an ancient kleenex, and the husks from sunflower seeds; and a charred filter from one of Anna’s cigarettes, which I dropped on the floor and crushed with my foot.

My room was the only one remaining. As soon as I stepped inside it I sensed the power, in my hands and running along my arms, I was close to it. I scanned the walls and shelves, it wasn’t there; my painted ladies watched me with their bristling eyes. Then I was certain: it was in the scrapbooks, I’d shoved them under the mattress without reading through all of them. They were the last possibility and they weren’t supposed to be here, they belonged in the city, in the trunk.

I heard a motor droning from down the lake, a different pitch, deeper than a powerboat.

“Hey look,” Anna called from the main room, “A big boat!” We went out on the point: it was a police launch like the ones driven by the game wardens, they were checking us the way they used to, to see if we had any dead fish and a licence to go with them; it was routine.

The launch slowed and drew into the dock. David was down there anyway, I would let him meet it, he was the one with the papers. I re-entered the house and stood by the window. Anna, inquisitive, sauntered down to join them.

There were two men, police or probably game wardens, they were wearing ordinary clothes; and a third man, blond, Claude from the village probably, and a fourth one, older, the size of Paul. It was odd that Paul was on the launch: if he were coming for a visit he would bring his own boat. David shook hands with them and they
clustered on the dock, talking in low voices. David dug into his pocket, for the licence; then he scratched his neck as if worried. Joe appeared from the outhouse path and the talking started over again; Anna’s head turned up towards me.

Then I saw David hurrying, taking the hill steps two at a time. The screen door banged shut behind him. “They found your father,” he said, breathing hard from the climb. He squinted his face, as if to show sympathy.

The door slammed again, it was Anna; he put his arm around her and they both studied me with the intent pouncing look they’d had at supper.

“Oh,” I said. “Where?”

“Some American guys found him in the lake. They were fishing, they hooked him by mistake; the body was unrecognizable but an old guy named Paul something-or-other down there, says he knows you, he identified the clothes. They figured he’d fallen off a cliff or something, he had a skull fracture.” Seedy department-store magician, producing my father out of nowhere like a stuffed rabbit out of a hat.

“Where?” I said again.

“It’s awful,” Anna said, “I’m really sorry.”

“They don’t know where it happened,” David said, “he must’ve drifted; he had a camera around his neck, big one, they think the weight kept him down or he would’ve been found sooner.” His eyes gloating.

It was clever of him to have guessed the missing camera, since I’d told them nothing. He must have thought quickly in order to make it all up in such a short time: I knew it was a lie, he was doing it to get back at me. “Did they ask to see your fishing licence?” I said.

“No,” he said, faking surprise. “You want to talk to them?”

That was a risk, he should have calculated better, it would expose his whole false construction. Maybe that’s what he wanted, maybe it
was intended as a practical joke. I decided to act as though I believed him, see how he’d get out of it. “No,” I said, “tell them I’m too upset. I’ll speak to Paul tomorrow when we get to the village, about the arrangements.” That was what they were called, the arrangements. “He’d want to be buried around here.” Convincing details, if he could invent I could invent also, I’d read enough murder mysteries. The detectives, eccentric hermits, orchid-raisers, sharp blue-haired old ladies, girls with jackknives and flashlights, for them everything fitted. But not in real life, I wanted to tell him, you’ve outsmarted yourself.

He and Anna glanced at each other: they’d planned on hurting me. “Okay,” he said.

Anna said, “Wouldn’t you rather …” and then stopped. They walked back down the steps, disappointed both of them, their trap had failed.

I went into the other room and took the scrapbooks out from under the mattress. There was still enough light to see by but I closed my eyes, touching the covers with my hands, fingertips. One of them was heavier and warmer; I lifted it, let it fall open. My mother’s gift was there for me, I could look.

The rest of the scrapbook had early people, hairs blazing out of their heads like rays or spikes, and suns with faces, but the gift itself was a loose page, the edge torn, the figures drawn in crayon. On the left was a woman with a round moon stomach: the baby was sitting up inside her gazing out. Opposite her was a man with horns on his head like cow horns and a barbed tail.

The picture was mine, I had made it. The baby was myself before I was born, the man was God, I’d drawn him when my brother learned in the winter about the Devil and God: if the Devil was allowed a tail and horns, God needed them also, they were advantages.

That was what the pictures had meant then but their first meaning was lost now like the meanings of the rock paintings. They
were my guides, she had saved them for me, pictographs, I had to read their new meaning with the help of the power. The gods, their likenesses: to see them in their true shape is fatal. While you are human; but after the transformation they could be reached. First I had to immerse myself in the other language.

Launch vibration, going away. I slid the page back into the scrapbook and replaced it under the mattress. Trample of the others on the hill, I stayed inside the room.

They lit the lamp. Noise of David fumbling and then the cards, he was laying out a game of solitaire; then Anna’s voice, she wanted to set up the other deck. They were playing doubles, slapping the cards down expertly as gamblers, monosyllables as they gained or lost. Joe sat in the corner on the bench, I could hear him scuffling against the wall.

For him truth might still be possible, what will preserve him is the absence of words; but the others are already turning to metal, skins galvanizing, heads congealing to brass knobs, components and intricate wires ripening inside. The cards tick on the table.

I unclose my fist, releasing, it becomes a hand again, palm a network of trails, lifeline, past present and future, the break in it closing together as I purse my fingers. When the heartline and the headline are one, Anna told us, you are either a criminal, an idiot or a saint. How to act.

Their voices murmur, they can’t discuss me, they know I’m listening. They’re avoiding me, they find me inappropriate; they think I should be filled with death, I should be in mourning. But nothing has died, everything is alive, everything is waiting to become alive.

T
he sunset was red, a clear tulip colour paling to flesh webs, membrane. Now there are only streaks of it, mauve and purple, sky visible through the window, divided by the window squares and then by the interlacing branches, leaves overlapping leaves. I’m in the bed, covered up, clothes in a pile on the floor, he will be here soon, they can’t postpone it forever.

Mumbles, cards gathered, swish and spit of teeth being brushed. Blown breath and guttering, the lamp goes out, the flashlight beams wash over the ceiling. He opens the door and stands hesitating, darkening the light he holds, after the morning and the afternoon he isn’t sure how to approach me. I feign sleep and he feels his way into the room, stealthy as moss, and unzips his human skin.

He thinks I’m in pain, he wants to evade it, he bends himself away from me; but I stroke him, move my hand over his body, he’s startled because I’m awake. After a minute he turns to me, stiffening, arms going around me and over me and I smell Anna on him, suntan lotion and pink face grease and smoke, but that doesn’t
matter; what matters is the other smell, smells, the sheets, wool and soap, chemically treated hides, I can’t here. I sit up, swing my legs out of the bed.

“Now what?” he says, whispers.

I tug at his hands. “Not here.”

“Christ!” He tries to pull me back down but I brace my legs, hooking them onto the side.

“Don’t talk,” I say.

He stumbles out of the bed then and follows me, from this room to the other and across the outer floor. When I’ve unlatched the screen door and the wooden door I take his hand: there is something outside which I have protection against but he doesn’t, I have to keep him close to me, inside the radius.